Pawsible Ways to Get Your Dog to Take Medicine

“A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down!” That might work for Mary Poppins and your kids, but it certainly doesn’t work for our beloved dog, Sadie.

Sadie may not be the “pick of the litter,” but she is the princess at our house! Getting Sadie to take medicine for an age-related medical problem has probably been worse than the proverbial pulling of teeth! She has outwitted and outfoxed us almost every time.

We think that we are certainly smarter than she is, but when we see the pills that she has spit out, we begin to question our own intelligence. Our first attempt at giving her medicine was to roll it up in a ball of fresh braunschweiger. We would cut the meat in half and roll it into two meatballs. She did eat these with gusto for a short while and then for whatever reason (only she knows for sure), she decided that she did not like the braunschweiger anymore and refused to eat it, thus not getting her medication.

So, on to our next plan of action! We tried cutting the pills in quarters and stashing them inside pieces of hot dog. That plan was successful for a day or two until she discovered the pill and began eating only the hot dog. We were foiled again! Thirdly, we tried putting it in a piece of rolled-up lunch meat, but to no avail. She sniffed the pill out, ate the lunch meat, and left the pill buried in her bed.

Aha! A light bulb went off for us , and we made the decision to totally crush the pill. Being experts at rolling meatballs by now, we made four meatballs from a soft-textured dog food and put the crushed pill inside. Success at last! She now eats her pills (disguised, of course), and for the moment at least, we can claim victory!

Sadie is my husband’s best friend, and he is much happier knowing that she is getting her much-needed medication. We may not be Mary Poppins, but we did get the medicine to go down!